


Heat and Lullabies

by TheCatWrites



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Complete, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCatWrites/pseuds/TheCatWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The author was having Barton/Natasha feels and needed to write something short. So she put them on a stakeout and just kind of went with what they gave her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat and Lullabies

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNINGS:** Child abuse
> 
> There is a point at which there is background music. You'll know when it starts. Here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t0W7jTyL0E
> 
> This fic sprang from a headcanon about Barton's musical tastes.

Heat and Lullabies

Mosquito netting whispers in the breeze from the oscillating fan. All the little creatures of nighttime sing their chorus into the wet darkness, blending into a sweet background hum punctuated by the occasional loud rasp of a cricket somewhere in the room, percussion provided by the rain tapping on the corrugated metal roof of the warehouse.

At the empty attic storeroom’s single window sits a woman, hidden from the outside by a swath of gauzy net nailed to the corners of the empty frame, glass long ago broken out by robberies and storms. Sweat beads at her hairline as she bends to look through the night-vision camera mounted on a tripod in front of her, lens peeking through a rip in the net that only looks accidental.

Across the street, an apartment building sits decaying, supposedly abandoned. Its windows are dark rectangles filled with jagged teeth of rusted security bars. The bulbs in the street lamps burned out years ago; now the only light comes from the few occupied buildings left on this block, security lights over doors and garages casting pale, harsh shadows that flicker with silhouettes of moth wings.

Six hours ago, three men entered that building. They are waiting for a fourth. So is she.

Her watch lights up, flashes red once. She sits up, laces her fingers, presses her hands above her head in a stretch. Her cotton t-shirt clings to her back and ribs with sweat and she plucks at it, trying to get some air between the fabric and her skin.

A frozen bottle of water sits half-melted by her chair, untouched, a puddle of condensation spreading from its base over the cement floor. She unscrews the cap and takes a swallow, sighs as the chilled liquid slides down her throat and cools her overheated blood.

Resting the side of the bottle against the back of her neck, she stands and crosses the room, treading silently in her hiking boots. In a corner hidden from the rest of the room behind a line of ceiling-high shelves and illuminated by a lantern with a low-lumens blue bulb, two sleeping bags are rolled out on the floor under a tent of more fine netting hung from the rafters. A small card table with two folding camp chairs sits against the back wall, holding a short-wave radio with the volume turned all the way down. Under the table are two navy-blue duffel bags and a cooler. On the back of each chair hangs a jacket and a holstered weapon.

The oscillating fan is aimed so that most of its benefit goes toward this indoor campsite, making the temperature almost bearable. She sets the water bottle on the table and pulls back the netting protecting the sleeping bags, causing a small whirlwind of tiny winged intruders to panic their way up to the darkness beyond the lantern’s fuzzy glow.

Outlined in blue and shadow, a man lies atop one of the sleeping bags. He’s dressed in dark green cargo pants and a black cotton t-shirt, the same uniform she’s wearing. He fell asleep lying on his back, but now lies on his side, curled in on himself, back to the wall.  
His breathing has the even rhythm of deep sleep. She steps under the net and crouches beside him, taps his shoulder. “Barton,” she murmurs. In response, his eyes snap open and he sits up, running a hand through his hair and yawning once. “Switch,” she tells him. “Nothing yet.”

He nods and stands up, reaches under the head of his sleeping bag and pulls out a combat knife, slides it into the sheath on his belt. He ducks out of the tent and she sees his silhouette moving around for a few seconds, hears the cooler open and close, then he steps out of the lantern light and all is silent and still again.

She lies down atop her own bag. It’s too hot to even consider crawling into it. She pulls her knife from its place at her hip and slides it between the layers of fabric beside her head, one hand on the hilt, and shuts her eyes, concentrating on enjoying the feel of the breeze from the fan as it cools the sweat and humidity coating her skin. The rain still taps out its drumbeat on the roof and all the little jungle creatures still sing out their nighttime calls, and she drifts into that space between half-awake and sleeping where memories and dreams slide in and out of one another.

_Three is crying again, big, gut-wrenching sobs that echo weirdly down the hall and through the vents and take on a hollow sound before arriving in the other girls’ rooms. “I want to go home!” she calls, “I don’t like it here! I want my mommy!”_

_“Oh, shut up!” Six snaps, yelling through the tiny slot in her door through which the meal trays come three times a day. “You’re stuck here with us so that means your mommy’s dead!”_

_“Noooooo!” Three wails, her volume increasing._

_“Stop crying, you stupid, whining baby! You’re not getting out of here! None of us are getting out of here!”_

_“Hush, Six!” It’s Four. She’s eight, the oldest of their group by almost two years. “You’re just scaring her worse. If they hear, we’ll all get in trouble. You know that.”_

_“My name’s not Six! It’s Valentina!”_

_“Hush up right now!” Four hisses, voice taking on a nervous tone. “You know we can’t talk like that. They’ll beat us again, and Three’s already gotten hit today!”_

_Two huddles against the wall, sitting under her bed, scratchy blanket that smells of bleach pulled tight around her shoulders. The bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling is on, like it always is, but under here she can pretend they don’t see her. She knows if they decide to come tonight it won’t make any difference whether she hides or not. It never does. But pretending helps._

_Six and Four are still arguing, though Three’s sobs have quieted back down to normal levels now that Six isn’t yelling at her. Two puts her hands over her ears and keeps chanting the same thing she repeats all night, every night._

_“My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. My mommy is Dina. My daddy is Alexei. We live in St. Petersburg. There was a fire. Please take me home. My name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. My mommy is Dina. My daddy is Alexei. We live in St. Petersburg. There was a fire. Please take me home.”_

_The yellow light of the bulb flickers, takes on an orangey-red hue. With a sudden thumping sound, the door slams open. She cringes back against the wall, squeezes her eyes shut. Smoke burns her throat, makes her nose run and her eyes water. “Please take me home,” she begs, “Please take me home.”_

_Then the floor gives way and she’s falling._

Natalia’s eyes fly open as she wakes with a start, jerking to a sitting position with her knife in her hand. Blue light casts shadows on mosquito netting in front of her face and she reaches out, runs her fingers down the fabric barrier. Its texture brings her back to the present and she lies back down, pulse slowly returning to normal. The hot sweat of a humid jungle night has been replaced by cold chills and suddenly the breeze from the fan is too much, is making her shiver, so she gets up and ducks out of the netting, crosses the room to lean against the wall next to the window and watch the rain, which has picked up and is sheeting down now, misting through the screen to wet the windowsill.

She studies her partner. Barton hasn’t moved from his position in the chair, eye pressed against the camera’s viewfinder, attention fixed on the house across the street. She waits to see if he’ll register her presence without her intentionally giving herself away.

“You know you’ve still got three hours until switch,” he says.

“Assuming they don’t show up tonight,” she points out.

“Thought the whole point of taking turns was to, you know, take turns.” _And you haven’t slept in two days_ , she can almost hear him thinking.

“I got bored.” Natalia leans forward a bit so she can see the apartment building. It’s wetter, but otherwise unchanged.

“So what’s yours about?” His tone is conversational, and she almost misses the question.

When it does register, her heart skips a beat. She knows he can hear the catch in her breath, too, but he doesn’t move, hasn’t moved since she came over here to stand beside him. Possibly he hasn’t moved since he sat down three hours ago. “What’s my what about?” she tries to play it off.

“Your nightmare.” He must know she wants to drop it. Apparently he’s not going to let it drop.

Fine. If he wants to ask personal questions at such a time, he can deal with the consequences. “You first.”

“Oh, I’ve got a whole playlist of greatest hits. All the old standards are on there; Survivor’s Guilt, Unresolved Family Tension, War Trauma, and of course Abusive Father Figure. That one’s a fan favorite.”

That shouldn’t be funny, but for some reason a laugh bubbles up out of her chest and she can’t stop it. As it escapes, she can feel some of the lingering tension along her spine go with it. She shakes her head, crosses her arms and relaxes into the wall. “Don’t suppose you’ve ever heard Kidnapped and Brainwashed?”

“I’ll admit, that one’s new to me.”

“Yeah. Not a lot of people know it.” She plays with a loose thread on the hem of her shirt. She knows she should keep talking, should offer him something to respond to, keep the conversation going. But none of the words she has seem right. Silence works its way between them, a tide threatening to wash away the shaky foundations of the bridge they’ve unexpectedly started building. They’ve been working together for over a year now and she always trusted him to have her back, but…to really _trust him_ , to open up the box in the back of her mind where she keeps a little girl who liked ballet and snow angels and mint tea with honey…she doesn’t know if she can. If she even _wants_ to.

 _Things can still go back to normal_ , she thinks. _We can just leave it_.

“His real name was Buck,” says Barton. “But everybody called him Trick, on account of his stage name was Trickshot.”

They’ve read each other’s files, so she knows who he’s talking about. In theory. But something tells her there’s more to this Trickshot than was in the file, a brief mention as the man who took young orphanage runaway Clint Barton and his older brother in, raised them in the circus life, taught Barton to shoot. This is an offering, another plank to add to their bridge. Another step toward meeting in the middle.

Not sure who she’s testing more, Barton or herself, she turns away, walks across the room with deliberate steps to where she left her water bottle on the table, and takes a long drink. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even twitch.

By the time she’s back by the window, she knows what she wants to say. “They called us by numbers instead of our names.”

His turn. “If the take on a show was low, he’d get liquored up and start in on the animals. But the blacksmith put a stop to that after he lamed one of the horses. Buck was the boss, but a good horse is expensive, and we could barely feed everyone as it was. I think I’d been in the act about five months by then.”

Her turn. “If we didn’t answer quickly enough to our numbers, they would beat us. Even the ones who were new and didn’t understand yet. I spent a lot of time with fractured ribs or pissing blood before I understood my name was Two.”

“The first few times he called me to his trailer, he made excuses, like he had an idea for a new shot to add to the act, or the homeschool tutor said my grades were getting worse.”

“There was one girl, her number was Six, but her name was Valentina. I remember, because she always used to swear she’d never give it up.”

“When I got wise to that, he gave up the pretense and would just come find me and drag me in there. Never when anyone could see, though, especially not my brother. Barney was big enough to stand up to him by then.”

“They found a way, of course. She didn’t care what they did to her, so they started punishing the rest of us for her misbehavior instead.”

“I used to hide under my bed every night and close my eyes, and think about my parents, and wish more than anything that I was back home.”

Her chest feels tight, like something’s pressing on it, making it hard to breathe. Nervous butterflies swirl in her stomach, but there’s only one more step to go and turning back is no longer an option. “So did I.”

And with that, the last plank is laid and suddenly the space between them, the carefully maintained barrier of professionalism, is gone. They’re together at the middle of their bridge. Natalia feels strangely exposed, even though Barton hasn’t looked at her this whole time, hasn’t even glanced up from his watch on the building across the street. Things she wants to say, thoughts she’s kept locked up for twenty years and never voiced aloud, crowd up to the front of her mind, so many that nothing comes out. She doesn’t have a reference for this, doesn’t know what comes next.

“You should try to get some more sleep, Natalia. I’ve got this.” He’s giving her an out, an opening to duck away for now and come back when she’s ready.

His trust that she’ll come back shows her where her next step goes. Carefully, she peeks under the lid of the box in the dusty back corner of her memories. Then she steps forward and reaches out, hesitant, to lay her hand on his shoulder. “Call me Natasha,” she says.

His hand comes up to cover hers. His palm is calloused and warm. “You should try to get some more sleep, Natasha.” His voice is quiet, but she can hear the sudden roughness, feel the light squeeze he gives her hand before letting go.

She wants to sit next to him on the floor and tell him all about Natasha, about how her favorite color was yellow and she and the boy from next door once covered the courtyard of their apartment block with snow angels and how she knew, just _knew_ , that she’d grow up to be the swan princess with the Moscow Ballet.

But there are three men in a building across the street and they’re waiting for a fourth.

Heat and sound and the mission come swirling back in from where they were waiting at the edges of consciousness and the rain on the roof is saying sleep now, _sleep now, sleep now_. So she steps away and walks back into the circle of blue light, ducks under the curtain of netting and lies down on top of her sleeping bag with her hand on her knife. The breeze from the fan carries the smell of rain and wet earth.

She’s almost back to the place where dreams merge with memories when he starts to sing.

His voice is rich and a little raw. The tune is slow and mournful, like an Appalachian version of a monastic chant, and the lyrics are repetitive, but it’s a beautiful repetition, a circle made of words.

_As I went down in the river to pray  
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way  
And who shall wear the starry crown  
Good lord, show me the way_

_Oh sisters let’s go down  
Let’s go down, come on down  
Come on sisters let’s go down  
Down to the river to pray_

_As I went down to the river to pray  
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way  
And who shall wear the robe and crown  
Good lord, show me the way_

_Oh brothers let’s go down  
Let’s go down, won’t you come on down  
Come on brothers let’s go down  
Down in the river to pray_

Like the river it’s about, Natasha follows the song down, past memories, past dreams, and into sleep.


End file.
